The Pittsburgh Steelers certainly revamped their quarterback room during the offseason, and the main part of that was the signing of veteran quarterback Russell Wilson. One expected byproduct related to Wilson’s addition, assuming he indeed wins the starting job, is increased red zone production in the passing game. Based on red zone passing stats posted by Wilson in 2023 with the Denver Broncos, there should be optimism in that one particular area.
On Monday, Twitter user BillyM_91 posted stats for quarterback red zone production by success rate, CPOE, and EPA/play in 2023 for players with at least 50 such attempts. As you can see in the table of data in the graphic, Wilson finished in the top 10 of the 19 players who qualified. Specifically, Wilson finished ninth overall in EPA per attempt with a 0.08 stat.
What is EPA? The site nfeloapp.com probably has the briefest and most concise answer to that question:
The concept of Expected Points (EP) was first introduced in a 1970 research paper by Virgil Carter, who was the Bengals starting QB at the time, and Robert Machol, who was a professor at Northwestern. Their paper quantified a concept intuitively understood by all football fans — possessing the ball closer to your opponent’s endzone is better than possessing it further away. Carter and Machol did this by adding together the point value and probability of all potential outcomes of a possession. As teams approach their opponent’s endzone, the probability of scoring (Touchdowns and Field Goals) increases.
When a team possesses the ball at the 50-yard line, the probability that their drive ends with a touchdown is 30%, and because the value of a touchdown is 7 points, the expected points from touchdowns on the drive is therefore 2.1 (0.3 * 7). Adding together all the values for all potential outcomes yields the total Expected Points.
Simply put, Expected Points describes how many points, on average, a team is expected to score on a possession given a particular field position.
As far as red zone CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expected) goes for red zone passing by quarterbacks in 2023, Wilson’s positive stat of 13.53 percent led all 19 players with at least 50 such passing attempts. That’s quite impressive and yet another reason to be somewhat excited about the impact that Wilson might have on the Steelers’ passing game inside the red zone in 2024.
If you prefer just some raw red zone passing stats for Wilson from the 2023 season, he was 42 of 70 passing for 270 yards with 20 touchdowns and one interception inside the opponents’ 20-yard line in 2023. He was, however, sacked seven times inside the opponents’ 20-yard line in 2023.
As a means of comparison, combined in 2023, the Steelers’ quarterbacks were 24 of 45 passing for 113 yards with five touchdowns and two interceptions inside the opponents’ 20-yard line. Two sacks were also incurred inside the red zone in 2023.
Here’s an extra tidbit about Wilson’s 20 touchdown passes inside the red zone in 2023 with the Broncos. Eight of those went to WR Courtland Sutton, whom many have speculated the Steelers might attempt to trade for at some point this offseason.
In case you missed it, I recently fully contextualized the touchdown passes that Wilson threw as a member of the Broncos in 2023 and obviously the 20 red zone scores are included within those. You can view that post at the link below.
